D-shaped dual-core photonic crystal fiber sensor: Enhanced sensitivity for optical and biomedical applications

We present a novel real-time dual-core D-shaped photonic crystal fiber sensor. Our photonic crystal fiber is made of lossy media, including metal and graphene, interfaces with dielectrics, including air, silicon and titanium dioxide. We aim to achieve a sensor design with enhanced sensitivity, compared to previous works in the literature, by integrating different media within an engineered sensor structure. We employ samples with refractive indices ranging from 1.35 to 1.39 to analyze the applicability and functionality of the proposed sensor structure. Our sensor operates in the optical communication wavelength range of 1 . 15 μ m to 2 μ m and can achieve high sensitivity, FOM, and resolution of 12,000 nm/RIU, 166 RIU − 1 and 2 × 1 0 − 3 RIU, respectively. For three different cancer cells: PC-12, Jurkat and Basal, we examine the sensor’s capabilities to detect changes in cancer cells compared to normal cells and achieve a high sensitivity value of 57142 nm/RIU for the PC-12 cancer sample. Our proposed sensor structure is compact, real-time and easy to fabricate, with applications in biomedical sensing, biochemistry, pharmaceutical inspection, and organic chemical detection. • A novel real-time dual-core D-shaped photonic crystal fiber sensor is simulated. • Enhanced sensitivity achieved by integrating multiple media in the sensor. • The sensor structure is compact and real-time. • The sensor works for biomedical, biochemical, pharma and chemical detection.